Stir Plate Fan Question

I am trying to build a stir plate with a case fan, but my fan has 4 wires. It is a Dell and has Black, Red, White, and Blue wires. I tried connecting the black and red to my power supply and nothing happened.

Any thoughts? Anyone ever use a similar case fan for a stir plate?

Thanks!

I built one using a new 120mm fan from a local IT shop, and it had 3 wires - red, black and yellow. The red was hot, black was ground, and the yellow was for RPM control. Not sure what a 4th one would be. What type of connector was at the end? Molex, or a mobo 3 pin fan connector?

my fan has 4 wires black red blue and yellow. i just hooked up the black and the red. 1 make sure the poliraty is right i hooked up mine backwords and it dident spin and 2 i was trying to underpower mine ( dident know it at the time the fan was 12 volts and i was trying to use 6 )and it would not start spinning on its own i had to give it a push to get it to spin. after i used a 12 volt supply it satarted to spin on its own when i turned it on. that was the problems i had i hope they help you

It sounds pretty similar to the fan that I used for my stir plate. Make sure your hot and ground polarity is correct. The other two seemed to be an RPM wire and a sensor wire. By shorting those two, I'm able to adjust the fan speeds from low to high. I just used a simple toggle switch for that function. I still used the rheostat to make fine adjustments, but by adding that switch I have a much greater speed range.

What current draw/amps are listed on the ones you are using? I have some low wattage fans and I'm not sure they will do the job...

I hooked up a fan that had only red and black wires and it ran fine. The fan is a 12vDC and power supply is only a 6 volt cell phone charger. I am just going to use the fan with 2 wires and throw the 4 wire one back in the scrap parts bin. Thanks for the replies.

If you go to the Project Locator, one of the stir plate builds tells you what to do with the 4 wire ones.